The Beatles Anthology: The ‘New Episode’ raged together seems to make no sense at all | television

TThere’s no doubt that the arrival of The Beatles Anthology in 1995 was a big deal. The series was broadcast in prime time on both sides of the Atlantic, and the ABC network in the United States even changed its name to ABeatlesC in its honour. The three accompanying albums (the first time the Beatles had allowed excerpts from their recording sessions to be officially released) sold for their millions. Its success helped launch the modern Beatles industry, a steady stream of officially sanctioned documentaries, reissues, remixes, compilations and extended editions, built on two ideas: that the Beatles archive contains unfathomable bounty; And that the band’s story is so rich that there is no limit to the number of times it can be fruitfully retold in a new light.

For a while, these ideas seemed to hold true, but lately, it’s been hard not to think that the Beatles’ Apple Corps might be trying to satiate an insatiable appetite for content from an increasingly bare cupboard. You can marvel at the highlights of Peter Jackson’s TV series Get Back and still wonder if the director didn’t stretch his material a bit; Whether the nearly eight hours — plus a separate Imax movie of The Beatles’ final live show on the roof of Apple’s London headquarters — and A re-release of the original 1970 documentary Let It Be – which might have been a very good thing.

Meanwhile, last year’s Martin Scorsese-produced Beatles 64 re-edited familiar footage — mostly from the 1964 Maysles Brothers documentary, What’s Happening! The Beatles were reissued in the US in 1991 under the title First US Visit, and then reissued by Apple in 2004 – and bundled with new interviews suggesting that everything that needed to be said about the events of 1964 had already been said, and that the two surviving Beatles had exhausted new angles on a subject they had been answering questions about for 60 years.

There’s a similar sense of futility in the new Anthology. It arrives with a fourth album of outtakes, but 23 of the 36 songs have been previously released, meaning vinyl buyers are being asked to pay nearly £70 for 50 minutes of ‘new’ music, most of which is largely unimportant to all but the most dedicated Banzai Fabs fans. There’s no sign of Carnival of Light, the near-mythical Stockhausen-influenced experiment the band recorded during the Sgt Pepper sessions, nor the legendary 27-minute version of Helter Skelter. Instead, you have to make do with a wobbly raw shot of their cover of Carl Perkins’ Matchbox.

There is also an “all-new” episode of the TV series, focusing on the making of the original anthology documentary and Free as a Bird and Real Love, two John Lennon demos of the surviving members on songs in the mid-1990s. These events are now as much in the past as Beatlemania was when the Anthology series was made: oddly enough, shots taken 30 years ago – a riot of ponytails, mullets, leather waistcoats and polished jeans – look even more dated than those of the 1960s, and the clothes worn by rock aristocrats in the 1990s have not yet crossed over into the realm of classic style.

The problem is that the new episode isn’t all that new at all. It’s basically a 50-minute bonus material from the 2003 DVD release of the Anthology: The three remaining Beatles are interviewed together at George Harrison’s house and at Abbey Road, loosely jamming old rock ‘n’ roll songs — and McCartney’s early effort, “Thinking About Relationship” — on acoustic guitars and harps; working on the new tracks in Paul McCartney’s home studio with producer Jeff Lynne; And sitting at the mixing desk while George Martin plays multitrack recordings from the 1960s.

Some of the shots are beautiful – there’s a lovely moment where Ringo wistfully addresses his bandmates “I love hanging out with you guys” – and some of them are strangely expressive: you can anticipate a lot of George Harrison’s visible exasperation as the Free as a Bird and Real Love sessions go on. (Off camera, he refused to work on Lennon’s third demo, On and Then, considering it “ridiculous garbage.” McCartney and Starr eventually finished the track in 2023, 22 years after Harrison’s death.)

McCartney has a funny story about convincing stubborn engineers at Abbey Road to continue working on Beatles sessions after their allotted hours by secretly dosing amphetamines into a tea jar in the studio. It’s nice to see them together and somewhat happy, although you can’t miss the tension between Harrison and McCartney. When Martin plays multiple tracks of the latter’s song “You Never Give Me Your Money,” Harrison suggests that it sounds “a little cheesy.” McCartney is noticeably unamused.

None of it is necessary or particularly insightful. Like the Anthology 4 album, it’s put together to suggest added value, that there’s something new to say about a topic that may have been exhausted.